1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a storage medium mounting/dismounting mechanism and an information processing apparatus suitable for a storage medium which is mountable at and dismountable from a storage medium adapter and which stored electronic data in the interior thereof is made to be automatically mountable at and dismountable from an information processing apparatus via a storage medium adapter.
2. Description of Related Arts
In recent years, a movement of unification of interfaces for various storage medium has been active. In accordance with the movement of unifying the interfaces, the standard of the PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) generalized among the interfaces had been announced. In accordance therewith, various information processing apparatuses (for example, computers and the like) corresponding to the PCMCIA standard have been on the market. On the other hand, as electronics at which a dedicated and small storage medium is provided, for example, there are an electronic note, an electronic camera, and the like. As a mechanism accommodating a storage medium of electronics of this kind, a storage medium adapter which is based upon the above-described standard and which can access to a computer in accordance with the specification of the PCMCIA card exists.
A conventional art is structured such that a storage medium is attached to a storage medium adapter, and the storage medium adapter is inserted in an information processing apparatus, and when the storage medium is exchanged, after the storage medium adapter together with the storage medium is ejected from the information processing apparatus, the storage medium is dismounted from the storage medium adapter. That is, when another storage medium is attempted to use after the information processing apparatus has read electronic data stored in the storage medium, or conversely, after the electronic data has been written from the information processing apparatus to the storage medium, there is troublesome that after the storage medium adapter is dismounted from the information processing apparatus and the storage medium is exchanged, and a storage medium is mounted at the storage medium adapter again, the storage medium adapter must be inserted into the information processing apparatus.
In order to improve the operating performance in mounting/dismounting of a storage medium adapter with respect to an information processing apparatus and mounting/dismounting of a storage medium with respect to the storage medium adapter as described above, for example, as shown in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 7-239923, a method is proposed in which the only storage medium can be manually ejected in a state in which the storage medium is mounted at the information processing apparatus via the storage medium adapter.
However, in the above-described conventional art, there have been problems as follows. When the storage medium adapter is inserted into the information processing apparatus, the manipulator carries out the inserting operation directly by hands. Thus, there has been the concern that contact failure of an electric connection between a connector unit of a storage medium and a connector unit of a storage medium adapter arises, or there has been the concern that unprepared load is applied to the connector units, and the connector units are broken. Therefore, there has been the problem that not only the reliability of the connectors is lost, but also the reliability of the connectors even between the connector unit of the storage medium adapter and the connector unit of the information processing apparatus is lost.
Further, in a case of the proposal in the above-described JP-A No. 7-239923 (corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 5,889,649), a dedicated storage medium adapter which is special to some extent is required.
Further, there has been concern that the storage medium is dismounted from the information processing apparatus by a careless operation while the information processing apparatus is reading the electronic data stored in the storage medium, or conversely, while the electronic data is written from the information processing apparatus to the storage medium.
Further, there is a device in which a compact type dedicated socket is equipped with an information processing apparatus only for the small storage medium as described above, and a storage medium can be inserted/pulled via the dedicated socket. However, in this case, a general-purposed storage medium based upon the PCMCIA standard which can be generally used for the same socket cannot be used, there is no extendable performance in using the information processing apparatus, the performance of facility deteriorates.